Doors Open
May 25-26
FREE

While it’s fun to create your own a la carte menu of buildings to visit during Doors Open Toronto, sometimes you crave more guidance or want some context to connect your stops. This year’s edition of the popular sightseeing event may satisfy these desires by offering a larger selection of guided walks.

The official Doors Open website lists 15 walking tours happening on Saturday and Sunday, up from four last year. These walks are offered in conjunction with community groups and organizations like Jane’s Walk and the Toronto Society of Architects. Participants were asked by Doors Open to tie into this year’s theme of “Creators, Makers, and Innovators.” Geographically they stretch from the Thistletown neighbourhood in Etobicoke to the grounds of Guild Park in Scarborough. All walks are free and are on a first come, first serve basis. While some attendees might be disappointed that the walks don’t necessarily go into the buildings shown during the walks, the stories told along the way will provide deeper insights into the characters and forces which shaped them.

We tagged along for a preview run of this year’s “signature tour,” which Doors Open commissioned from Heritage Toronto. Bookended with stops at City Halls past and present, “Creating Toronto: The Story of the City in Ten Stops” is designed to show walkers how innovation and creativity have shaped Toronto since its establishment. Each stop symbolizes a particular theme in the city’s development, including nods to our financial (King and Bay), commercial (Queen and Yonge), and educational (the one-time site of Ontario Veterinary College on Temperance Street) accomplishments. Plenty of tidbits are shared at each stop—we enjoyed a story about how 11,000-year-old footprints were discovered on the lake bed during a water pipe installation near Hanlan’s Point a century ago.

For your own sneak peek of the tour, check out the gallery.

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<strong>St. Lawrence Market</strong>, which houses Toronto's first purpose-built City Hall. The present building was constructed around the central frontage of that original.<br /> <br /> During the 1850s it was the launch pad for William Davies' meat-packing empire, whose size by the end of the end of the 19th century is suspected of earning Toronto its nickname of Hogtown.

St Lawrence

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Opened in 1892, the <strong>Gooderham Building</strong> was chosen as a walk stop to symbolize the connections between commerce, finance, and industry during the late Victorian era. Besides their distillery, the Gooderham family interests included banking (Bank of Toronto) and insurance (Manufacturers Life).

Flatiron Side

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Looking north up Yonge Street from Front Street. <br /> <br /> Yonge was originally built during the 1790s as a straighter version of an existing portage and trail route created by the region's First Nations, connecting lakes Ontario and Simcoe. It soon formed the spine of the city's transportation network.

Yonge Street

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The third facility to bear the name <strong>Union Station</strong> since 1858, the current version opened in 1927. Toronto's core railway lands were built on fill which gradually extended the city southward.

Union Station Covered

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Thanks to the opening of branches in western Canada, and a mining boom in the north, Toronto's banking industry grew rapidly in the early 20th century. To house the increasing number of employees and accommodate growing stacks of paperwork, bank head offices moved into larger buildings. This eventually led to the construction of major skyscrapers, starting with Commerce Court in the early 1930s.

Banking Tower

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Apart from this plaque, you'd never guess that Temperance Street east of Bay was the original home of the <strong>Ontario Veterinary College</strong>. Starting with King's College (the forerunner of the University of Toronto), the city has hosted a long line of institutes of higher learning, even if some of them merged into U of T (Trinity College) or, like McMaster University and Ontario Veterinary College, moved on to other cities. Our current mix of colleges and universities hosts over 220,000 students.

OVC Plaque

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From the discovery of insulin to critical research in stem cell research, Toronto can claim many medical breakthroughs. When it opened in 1892, <strong>St. Michael's Hospital</strong> had a grand total of six staff members.

St. Mikes

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For over a century, the intersection of Queen and Yonge was a retail battleground between <strong>Eaton's and Simpson's</strong> department stores. Their competition also moved the city's commercial core north from the retailers and wholesalers which had lined King and Front streets.

Eaton Centre

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Yonge Street has long been a centre for the city's entertainment needs, from combination vaudeville/movie houses like the <strong>Elgin and Winter Garden theatres</strong> (opened 1913) to the music scene which flourished during the 1960s.

There are plenty of food options for famished TIFF-goers near the Elgin and Winter Garden theatres.

Elgin

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There are plenty of food options for famished TIFF-goers near the Elgin and Winter Garden theatres.

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Born from one of the largest global architectural competitions held at the time, Toronto's present <strong>City Hall</strong> was a break from the city's stuffy Victorian traditions and a symbol of a modern metropolis when it opened in 1965.

Nathan Phillips City Hall

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